This invention relates to systems and methods for extracting and recovering amino acids and phosphorus from animal and municipal wastes.
Municipal and agricultural waste disposal is a major problem. Feedlots, animal barns, agro-industrial plants, municipal sewage, and farms that keep large numbers of animals are sources of enormous quantities of organic waste. The disposal of untreated organic waste causes serious pollution problems which include those tied to the wastes' high content of chemically oxidizable components, expressed as COD or chemical oxygen demand, and BOD, biological or biochemical oxygen demand. When these pollutants reach bodies of water, either because they leach from disposal sites or as a consequence of being directly released or transported into water bodies, they deoxygenate the receiving waters and impair the receiving waters' capability to support aquatic life.
Acidity and high pathogen content add to the COD and BOD problems of untreated waste disposal. Acrid gases released into the atmosphere are not only unpleasant but they can also contribute to acid deposition, global greenhouse effects, and ozone depletion.
For agricultural animals, the animals are confined in high densities and lack functional and sustainable waste treatment systems. The liquid wastes are generally treated in large anaerobic lagoons with intermittent disposal through land applications (Stith, P. and Warrick, J., Boss Hog, North Carolina's pork revolution, The News & Observer, 1-3, February '9-26, 1995; USEPA, Proposed regulations to address water pollution from concentrated animal feeding operations, EPA 833-F-00-016, January 2001, Office of Water, Washington, D.C., 20460). This system was developed in the early and mid-20th century prior to the current trend in high concentrated livestock operations. However, one of the problems with this approach is that recently there has been a push to reclaim nutrients from the manure for use as fertilizer, and the current approach is not sufficiently conducive to such a reclamation effort. In addition, when manure is stored in lagoons, runoff and leakage can detrimentally affect the water quality of rivers, lakes, and groundwater.
In particular, the recovery of phosphorus and proteins from manure could be advantageous to both offset costs and to improve and lessen the environmental impacts of manure storage and treatment. Phosphorous in manure can contaminate rivers, lakes, and bays through runoff, if applied onto a cropland excessively. Thus, recovering phosphorous from manure can not only help reduce such runoffs, but also reduces the use of commercial fertilizer based on phosphate rock. The phosphorus mine has limited reserves and cannot be replaced by other means as fertilizer. Protein is a natural resource used in a wide range of commercial applications from pharmaceuticals to dietary supplements, foods, feeds, and industrial applications.
All of the references cited herein, including U.S. patents and U.S. patent application Publications, are incorporated by reference in their entirety.